Szmanda Wanted Crush On Sara

Eric Szmanda (Greg Sanders) recently revealed it was his idea that CSI's quirky lab technician should have a crush on Sara Sidle.

"They loved it, and they actually did a rewrite on the episode that very day and incorporated it into a scene," Szmanda told Sarah Kuhn at Backstage.com, in an article examining the success of guest actors who became regulars on television series. The actor said his primary motivation in lobbying for this and other character arcs wasn't simply more screentime: "I was campaigning for the series-regular role, and then I was campaigning for the crush on Jorja, and I was campaigning for the promotion to [work out in the field], but my campaign was just made up of bringing as much as I could to the character and to the show."

Szmanda said that when he was offered the chance to become a series regular on CSI at the beginning of season three, his agent advised him against signing up for the long haul. "If I would have listened to my representatives at the time, I would not be on CSI anymore," he said. "I'd probably be doing some sitcom on The WB that's going to be canceled in a couple of episodes."

Season five has opened up more doors for the former lab rat, with Greg Sanders finally passing his proficiency test in last week's episode, "Who Shot Sherlock?" "Since the very beginning of this season, I knew that things were going to be different. I just didn't know how different. Carol Mendelsohn told me that the days of [me] only doing one or two scenes an episode were over, and I would be working a lot more and all that. I trusted her, and it's all happening."

The complete article, which also includes comments from Alias' Greg Grunberg and Gilmore Girls's Sean Gunn can be found at Backstage.com. Thanks to Al Fornos for this!

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